Tiny beach awash with demand to access Lake Washington

City considered another option before moving to buy back the tiny waterfront lot

Daniel DeMay
| on August 20, 2015

Photo: KOMO STAFF

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It's a fight over a dead-end street, really.

Or at least it was a dead-end street, thanks to the fact that it ran into Lake Washington's western shore, in northeast Seattle.

And it's a long story that starts in 1932 or so and has all the makings of a neighborhood uproar.

In short, though, the end of Northeast 130th Street was given to the county and turned into a public beach access until, 80 or so years later, new adjoining property owners sued the city and county for ownership of the 60-foot-wide beachfront space.

A technicality in the law and mistakes in the transfer of the records 80 years earlier made the beach the shared property of the adjoining property owners, a court found last year. Then, earlier this year, the new owners put up a fence and closed it to the public.

Now, after an uprising from neighborhood locals who want their beach access back, the city has taken up the torch and is preparing an offer to buy the access back. And if the owners, Keith and Kay Holmquist to the north and Fred Kaseburg to the south, won't sell?

The city will use eminent domain powers to force them.

"We're still kind of puzzled why they want to spend a lot of money when they have another street end nearby that they already own," Kaseburg said earlier this week.

He and the Holmquists haven't yet received an offer from Seattle Parks and Recreation, but Kaseburg and others had heard it would be around $400,000 for the lot.

That other street end, not far away at the end of Northeast 135th Street, is indeed city property and does run right up to the lake. But it seems it won't work for a public access.

A steep embankment and permits allowing adjoining properties to encroach make the space an unlikely candidate, said David Takami of Parks and Recreation.

Seattle Department of Transportation assessed the property, but calls to officials there were not immediately returned, so further details will have to wait.

The mayor's office made the official push to buy back the property last Thursday in a highly publicized announcement, after City Council members had sent a letter in June endorsing efforts to take it back.

City Councilman Tim Burgess said the way the land was lost and the organizing of the community factored into the council's decision to support getting the beach back, but limited lake access in the north end was the biggest factor.

"Maintaining these access points is very, very important," Burgess said this week.

He also said the city had considered other properties -- beside the Northeast 135th Street site -- as alternatives, but Takami wasn't aware of others.

While Burgess said he is confident the city will have little trouble getting the property back (the power of eminent domain is "quite influential," he said), Kaseburg said he wouldn't be letting the property go any time soon.

"We don't want to part with it," Kaseburg said. "We'll deal with them when they (move forward)."

The use of eminent domain in Washington is not a simple takeaway of the property, though it does seem that way for unwilling owners. State law requires the government agency to pay fair market value for the land in question.